What to Ask After Years of Denials

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/sports/cycling/hard-questions-for-lance-armstrong.html

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Standing atop the podium at the 2005 Tour de France, Lance Armstrong addressed the crowd after he won a record seventh Tour, looking into the sea of cycling fans gathered along the Champs-Élysées in Paris and publicly challenging those who had suspected he had doped to win.

“I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics, I’m sorry for you,” he said. “I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.”

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey set to be broadcast on her network, OWN, on Thursday and Friday night, Armstrong will finally reveal that those skeptics were right: he did use performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions to win. And he used those drugs and methods repeatedly.

Winfrey interviewed him on Monday at a hotel in Austin, Tex., and Armstrong “teared up and cried” during the inquiry, a person with direct knowledge of it said Wednesday. The person, who called the stories Armstrong told Winfrey “a classic Shakespearean tale,” insisted on anonymity because that person is not authorized to discuss the contents of the interview.

It is unclear what made Armstrong lose his composure when he spoke with Winfrey, who is known for her teary-eyed guests, because her network has not released any excerpts from Armstrong’s comments.

Here are the questions Winfrey needed to ask if she wanted to “go deep” with her inquiry, as Armstrong suggested she should.

‘ARMY OF ENABLERS’ The United States Anti-Doping Agency said you had “an army of enablers” helping you dope. Who were the accomplices who were essential in your getting away with it?

When you briefly retired from cycling after winning the 2005 Tour, you said you did so to spend time with your children and be a better father. Do your five children, ages 2 to 13, know about your doping past? If so, when and how did you tell them?

As a teenager, you began training with the then United States national team coach Chris Carmichael, the man you said became your longtime personal coach. (The infamous Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who is serving a lifetime ban from Olympic sports for doping athletes, is thought to be the real brains behind your success.)

Carmichael, who founded a successful training business on the fact that he was your coach, was accused of doping national team riders in the 1990s at the same time he began working with you. (Carmichael eventually settled the case out of court.)

Did Carmichael have anything to do with your doping, or have any knowledge of your doping? If not, when did you first begin using performance-enhancing drugs and who provided those drugs to you?

DISPUTED ADMISSION Frankie Andreu, one of your former teammates and closest friends, said he and his wife, Betsy, heard a doping confession from you in October 1996 when visiting you in a hospital while you fought cancer. They said they were in the room with several of your friends when they overheard two doctors ask if you had ever used performance-enhancing drugs. They said you had answered yes: EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and cortisone.

Stephanie McIlvain, your personal representative at Oakley who is married to a man high up in that company, told the three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond in a 2004 phone call that she heard that doping admission. “I’m not going to lie,” she said in the conversation that LeMond secretly recorded. “You know, I was in that room. I heard it.”

When you denied, again and again, that the admission never occurred, were you lying? If so, how did you keep most of the people in the hospital room that day quiet about your doping? Did former sponsors, like Nike and Oakley, know about your doping? Did they ever ask you about any of the doping allegations? If not, why do you think they never asked when the evidence against you was mounting?

WHAT DID YOUR EX-WIFE AND SUBSEQUENT PARTNERS KNOW? According to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, at least one of your former teammates said your former wife, Kristin, was complicit in your doping. At the 1998 world championships, one rider said Kristin Armstrong handed out cortisone pills wrapped in aluminum foil, prompting another rider to say, “Lance’s wife is rolling joints.”

How and when did Kristin become involved in your doping program and was it difficult to tell her about it at first? Were your subsequent partners — including Sheryl Crow and current girlfriend, Anna Hansen — also privy to your doping?

HARASSMENT ACCUSATIONS Did you ever have any concern about disparaging and harassing so many of the people who claimed you had doped, like the Andreus, the former bicycle mechanic and personal assistant Mike Anderson, the former masseuse Emma O’Reilly or LeMond and his wife, Kathy?

The Andreus testified in a 2005 civil case that you had admitted to drug use in the Indianapolis hospital room in 1996, and you subsequently called them liars. Frankie Andreu said he had trouble keeping jobs within cycling because you had blackballed him for speaking out. Is it true that you used your power in cycling to try to crush him and his family?

You called O’Reilly a prostitute and an alcoholic and harassed Anderson so much that he and his family had to flee Austin, Tex., for New Zealand. LeMond claimed you sought to destroy his bike company by pressuring the manufacturer of those bikes, Trek Bicycle Corporation, to undermine him.

Do you regret anything you said or did to those people? How will make amends with them?

BRIBERY ACCUSATIONS At least two riders have claimed that you bribed officials at the International Cycling Union, cycling’s world governing body, to cover up a positive drug test at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. If that is true, whose idea was that bribe and how did the transaction occur? Were Pat McQuaid, the cycling union’s president, or Hein Verbruggen, the union’s honorary president involved?

The investment banker Thom Weisel is one of the defendants named in a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that was filed by Floyd Landis, one of your former teammates. Landis said that Weisel and other principals of the United States Postal Service team, including you, used taxpayer dollars to fund the team’s doping when doping constituted a violation of the sponsorship contract.

How much did Weisel know about the team’s doping? He also has been an integral part of USA Cycling, the sport’s national governing body. Did officials within that organization have any knowledge of your drug program? Did they ever question you about the doping accusations that have dogged you for more than a decade?

EPO Dr. Craig Nichols, an oncologist who treated your cancer, gave written testimony in a lawsuit in 2005 that you never admitted, suggested or indicated to him that you ever used performance-enhancing drugs. He testified that he checked your blood levels periodically from 1996 to October 2001 and that your blood levels “remained consistent and did not fluctuate outside the normal range.”

“Had Lance Armstrong been using EPO to enhance his cycling performance, I would have likely identified the differences in his blood levels,” he said.

If Nichols was telling the truth, but you were taking EPO during the time he had been monitoring your blood, how did you keep your blood levels consistent? Did it worry you that he would discover your drug regimen?

COMING CLEAN Before the United States Anti-Doping Agency released its 1,000 pages of evidence against you last fall, did you ever think you would come clean? Or did you think you would go to your grave with your secret?

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Brian Stelter contributed reporting.